Again, MIT provides information that just doesn't fit into the soundbites of climate policy opponents. First they completely ignore the desktop bloggers by insisting that we have a climate problem, and now they ignore the desktop bloggers whose only answer to anything remotely energy-related is "NUCLEAR." Clearly this is a second rate institution. Ignore them and listen to the Republican staffers who know more.

3:46 pm May 20, 2009

resourceguy wrote :

Hey at least we now have the pork spending formula from Harry Reid to get massive Federal spending on a waste disposal site leading up to the point where you lead the charge to kill off the project before any waste shows up. Talk about a tunnel to no where. Bring on the nuke spending without the nukes---its green in that context.

4:34 pm May 20, 2009

Susanne E. Vandenbosch wrote :

Too many reactors are one of a kind, a feature that increases both costs and delays. Canada settled on one design. Some states area allowing surcharges on electricity bills to help pay for new reactors.

7:32 pm May 20, 2009

kent beuchert wrote :

I'm at a loss as to where those cost numbers come from. A Texas utility reported a few months ago that power from one of their nuclear plants cost 1.86 cents per kilowatthour during the preceding 12 months , with .39 cents devoted for fuel costs, .20 for decomissioning and .10 cents for nuclear waste storage. A recent calculation indicates that is a 1100 MW nuclear plant is constructed in three years (which several nuclear companies will guarantee) with money costing 6%, then at $4.8 billion per gigawatt (todays' quoted rates for Gen II plus technology) the plant would produce power at roughly 5 cents per kilowatthour. It seems obvious that MIT doesn't have a handle on nuclear power costs. High interest rates for nuclear plants are based on faulty logic - the old days when anyone and everyone could halt a plant's construction and operating licenses were separated from build licenses. Now you obtain both before construction begins. This ciuntry is absoletely insane to believe that alternative energies like wind or solar will provide anywhere near the carbon free power that we need and will need in the future. The fact that China is building a new nuclear plant every few months means that we will badly lag and place ourselves in an even more disadvantageous position - trying to compete with exorbitantly priced energy. Now Buffet is investing in Chinese automakers. Now cost out windmills, which are unable to provide reliabel power and need 100% backup support from fossil fuel plants. The run about $2million plus and produce on average les than 1/2 a megawatt, makijng a gigawatt source cost well over $4 billion. But a nuclear plant last 60 years a windmill about a third that, resulting in gigawatt windmill costs for 60 years at over $10 billion. And then there's the cost of the duplicate power backup generator. As you can see, wind power is exorbitantly expensive.

10:26 pm May 20, 2009

Carbon Cowboy wrote :

let's see ..If I build a nuke I don't have to buy CO2 rights from the government as I have no CO2 emissions. Now the government plans to utilize the CO2 auction revenues to help low income families pay for the huge energy price increases, to subsidize energy R&D, to subsidize windmills and solar, to pay of TARP and fix the Social Security system. Looks like the windfall just went away.

If utilities get the CO2 rights for free as in the revised Waxman, the utility who builds a nuke sells the free rights to those who would have purchased them from the government. The government is out even more CO2 revenue.

With Nukes it looks like many of the climate change subsidies will have to come from the general taxpayers.budget ---not out of the climate auction slush fund. More tax increases in addition to energy price increases.

Also it looks like 80% of the CO2 reduction in 2015 (and still 50% in 2025) is coming from the purchase of international offsets (ref: EPA analysis of Waxman, graph on page 14).... More revenue that will be going overseas and not to Washington. And don't expect the price to stay low. We will have replaced OPEC with a CO2-OPEC.

3:50 am May 21, 2009

Bill Woods wrote :

kent beuchert: "I’m at a loss as to where those cost numbers come from. A Texas utility reported a few months ago that power from one of their nuclear plants cost 1.86 cents per kilowatthour during the preceding 12 months , ... A recent calculation indicates that is a 1100 MW nuclear plant is constructed in three years (which several nuclear companies will guarantee) with money costing 6%, ..."

That Texas plant was paid for long ago, so the only costs are for operation.

Build a plant in three years? That seems very fast; four to five years, yeah. Several ABWRs have been built in less than four years. The first AP1000 just started construction, and is due to be finished in 2013. On the other hand, the first EPR is at least three years behind schedule.

The MIT paper assumes a "10% weighted average cost of capital (WACC)" for the first round of new plants. But if their construction goes well, later plants might pay only 7.8%. Eliminating the "risk premium from our calculations lowers the levelized cost of electricity from nuclear power to 6.6¢/kWh."

12:40 pm May 21, 2009

Dan Yurman wrote :

While the U.S. fiddles around with fantasies of lighting its cities with solar and wind power, the French, Japanese, U.K., India, China, and Russians are betting the ranch that the only way out of the global warming crisis is to ditch fossil plants and build nuclear energy power stations. Even Arab nations in the Middle East, with oceans of oil under their sands, are getting into the act. The United Arab Emirates has plans for several new nuclear reactors and Obama doesn't seem to have a problem with that based on a report in today's WSJ.

At the rate things are going, most of the new reactors in the world will not be built by U.S. firms. In the U.K. French and German firms are the leading candidates to build up to 18 new reactors. In India the Russians inked a massive deal for four new reactors in December. Despite a huge trade mission to India in January, no U.S. firms have signed deals to actually build nuclear reactors with that country due to a host of legal issues over indemnification and protection of intellectual property. Agreements in principle still have a long way to go to become EPC deals.

The loss in export earnings and U.S. jobs is going to be significant over the next two decades because the Obama administration has its ear tuned to the siren song of “green technologies. ” Unless political realism, not ideology, infuses the thinking of Congress and the White House, the nuclear industry will have to develop strategies for development based on a realistic appraisal it has no friends inside the beltway

It's good to know that loan officers in other countries will have clean, warm, and well lit offices while they manage the declining accounts of debtors in the U.S. The wealth decline will continue.

3:42 pm May 22, 2009

Monica from ACCCE wrote :

Affordable electricity is an essential part of protecting consumers and American businesses. During the America’s Power Factuality Tour, our team traveled all over the country to document the places, people and technologies involved in producing cleaner electricity from domestic coal. Our travels brought us to Council Bluffs, Iowa, home of the Walter Scott Energy Center – one of the most efficient coal-based plants in America. This facility generates more than 1,600 megawatts of affordable electricity, which has a positive long-term economic impact on the region—one that includes a Google data facility.

While most people in the US continue to have visceral concerns about nuclear power, the rest of the world is going for it in a big way. It seems to me this is a result of few - but important - factors:
1) The issue of nuclear waste is completely misunderstood. Why on earth would we throw away the vast majority of the energy contents in what we call "waste"? It is, in fact, barely used fuel, not waste. The solution is to close the fuel cycle and reclaim more of the energy available in "spent fuel". Disposal of the true waste would be much easier and require less repository capacity.
2) Most people don't understand the term "base load". Wind, solar and most other renewables are not available when you need them, where you need them, which is the basis for having back up power with fossil or nuclear. Without these predictable sources of electricity, large manufacturing operations requiring 24/7 power guarantees would not be feasible.

We need all of the power sources available to us. Excluding the nuclear option is simply irrational.

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Environmental Capital provides daily news and analysis of the shifting energy and environmental landscape. The Wall Street Journal’s Keith Johnson is the lead writer. Environmental Capital is led by Journal energy reporter Russell Gold, and includes contributions from other writers at the Journal, WSJ.com, and Dow Jones Newswires. Write us at environmentalcapital@wsj.com.